The present application corresponds to French patent application 99.07476 of Jun. 14, 1999, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention has for its object a support adapted to receive products that are to be baked in an oven or dried in a dryer.
This support is particularly adapted for baking ceramic products of the xe2x80x9choneycombxe2x80x9d type as catalyst supports.
These honeycomb elements are generally constituted by parallelepipedal or cylindrical blocks which are traversed from side to side by a multiplicity of channels of square or triangular cross-section which can be less than 1 millimeter with partitions 1 mm to {fraction (3/100)}millimeter thickness.
Because of their small cross-section and their relatively great length (relative to the cross-section), these channel are very difficultly traversed by hot gases from the baking oven and their baking is irregular, which seriously diminishes their quality.
The use of perforated plates does not permit obtaining homogeneous circulation through all the channels, from which arise problems connected to the differences of flow between open or closed channels.
The present invention has for its object a process providing a solution to this problem.
The process according to the invention consists in placing the catalyst elements to be baked or dried, their channels being vertical, on a parallelepipedal support constituted by a ceramic foam such that the channels of the catalyst element will be in vertical position relative to the support, which has the result that the hot gases pass through the support from side to side and penetrate said channels.
The ceramic foam is a known product which is principally used as a filter in foundry molding: the molten metal is poured onto these filters of ceramic foam, the molten metal passing through this filter and filling the mold.
Work conducted by the applicant has shown that this ceramic foam can perform a totally different function than that for which it was designed.
It is however been discovered that the support of ceramic material should not be too thick, because the loss of pressure to which the hot gas flow passing through it is subject, would be such that the gas flow would not circulate, or at least would circulate poorly within the channels passing through the catalyst support block.
It is therefore necessary that the support be a thin plate, which is to say of a thickness comprised between 1 and 5 centimeters.
But then, as the ceramic foam has a very low resistance to puncturing and flexure, it is necessary to provide means to rigidify it.
According to the invention, these means are constituted by bars carrying the plate of ceramic foam, these bars resting on carrying elements of the oven.